Light at the end…

My wife went to Atlanta last Thursday for a week of babysitting fun. I stayed behind in order to make progress on my book and indeed I have been making excellent progress for the past few days.

The weather has been excellent however; and I have several friends who want to go fishing as do I. One of them called and I nearly gave in, I tentatively decided to take a day off, either today or tomorrow, and to just put the book on hold and go fishing, after all I rationalized, I have worked very hard this week and deserve it. But honestly I felt guilty about it, as though I would be letting God down if I did so. It was not lost on me that I have friends from North Florida coming in over the Fourth of July weekend to go fishing and it just seemed to be taking too much time away from my book to go fishing.

Arghhh! Ok, Ok, I called last night and reluctantly cancelled my fishing trip and told my buddies it would be next week at the earliest before I could go. I was determined to dig in and get another chapter or two knocked out.

I have a light at the end of my dock that is similar to a swimming pool light. It is underwater and it attracts tarpon in big numbers. This morning I got up about 4:30 AM and saw the light and decided to go out there and watch them for a while before writing WFTD and starting on my book. I made some coffee and walked outside.

When I did I was nearly blown off the dock. There is a strong west wind blowing this morning. The old fisherman axiom is, “When the wind is out of the west give fishing a rest”, and it is oh so true. Fishing is usually terrible on a west wind, and besides it is blowing too hard to fish comfortably anyway. The weather forecasters missed this one I tell you. They were predicting some good weather for the rest of the week, at least the last time I checked it.

Hmmm All I could do is say, “Thank you Lord!” There is nothing worse than sitting at my desk typing away and looking out at a beautiful ocean and lovely day, wishing I were fishing. I was prepared to do it, but I knew I would be tormented by it all day.

Today I look out there and say, “Man I would hate to be out there today, I pity those poor charter guys who have to go out in weather like this and try to hammer out a living.

This reminds me of one of my favorite verses in the Bible that states that God is good all of the time. The Bible teaches that God is good by His very nature, but all humans have the free will to turn away from Him and be sinful or live their lives for themselves and ignore His work. Satan wants us to think about all sorts of things that will draw us away from our service to the Lord and lead us to sin which will result in our ruin. The Bible teaches that we should think about the things of the Lord and it is good advice. I think He rewards such behavior, don’t you?

Philippians 4:8
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.